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  3. Tycoons gathering this weekend at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters will

Tycoons gathering this weekend at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters will

游客2023-12-22  23
问题     Tycoons gathering this weekend at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters will be giving money away, not trying to make more. Larry Page, one of the search firm’s founders and, with a personal fortune estimated at over $14 billion, one of the world’s richest 33-year-olds, is holding a fundraiser for one of his favourite charitable causes, the X Prize Foundation. The foundation is a force behind one of the most intriguing trends in philanthropy: promoting change by offering prizes.
    It has worked before. The chronometer was invented to win an 18th-century British government prize. Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to win $25,000 offered by Raymond Orteig, a hotelier. That inspired Peter Diamandis, the X Prize’s creator, to offer $10 million for the first private space flight, won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne.
    In October the foundation launched its second prize, for genomics: $10 million to the first inventor able to sequence 100 human genomes in ten days. In the same month Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese mobile-phone entrepreneur, endowed an annual prize of $5 million plus $200,000 a year for life for former African leaders reckoned to have governed well. Last month a British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, launched the Virgin Earth Challenge, offering $25 million to the inventor of a commercially and environmentally viable method of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
    The Rockefeller Foundation has recently formed a partnership with InnoCentive, an entrepreneurial website, to offer financial rewards to people who solve specific social challenges posted on the site. The $1.5 billion Advance Market Commitments, recently put up by a group of rich states and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to stimulate the production of vaccines, is a prize of sorts.
    And if this weekend’s event goes well, the X Prize Foundation plans to add to the boom by announcing a further ten prizes worth $200 million over the next five years, in areas ranging from space and medicine (again) to education, energy and entrepreneurship. This spring, a further X Prize for the creator of a super-efficient car is likely.
    Matthew Leerberg of Duke University, points out that prizes are more commonly based on recognition of past achievement (such as the Nobel awards), or promote awareness of causes favoured by the donor. "Incentivising" prizes, by contrast, stimulate achievement of specific goals. That has big attractions for businesslike philanthropists such as Mr. Page. This new generation of donors believes that traditional philanthropy is hugely inefficient. On past experience, Dr. Diamandis reckons that a prize means "ten to 40 times the amount of money gets spent". Transatlantic fliers spent a combined $400,000 to win $25,000 from Mr. Orteig; the 26 teams competing for the $10 million spaceflight prize spent $100 million.
    Dr. Diamandis says Mr. Page’s fundraising efforts offer even greater leverage: "Larry says that if he were to give to a university, he’d get about 50 cents on the dollar of value, maybe $2 if there are matching funds. But he gets ten-times leverage by launching a prize, and 100-times leverage by supporting a prize-giving organisation." Prizes may also stimulate those whom old-style grant-making processes fail to reach, such as people outside mainstream research institutions and corporate life.
    It can go wrong: prizes, such as that for honest government in Africa, may be too small, given other incentives. The criteria need to be clear and sensible—easier in science than in woollier areas such as social policy. The efficiency of a car engine can be defined in terms of a miles-per-gallon equivalent. But, as the X Prize Foundation may soon discover, coming up with a clear, testable and useful challenge in, say, education is tricky.
    Developing rules for such tricky prizes is one reason why the foundation needs $50 million for its running costs, which will support a staff of 40 "prize experts" who will identify suitable prizes, write the rules and try to generate public excitement.
    Even clear rules and a big prize may not deliver the desired result. From 1994 to 1999 the Rockefeller Foundation offered a $1 million prize for a cheap, reliable test for sexually transmitted diseases. The offer expired without being claimed. Sir Richard describes the chances of the Virgin Earth Challenge being won as "less likely than likely". And yet, he says, if the prize is won, "It will be the happiest day of my life, the best cheque I’ve ever written." [br] "Leverage" in the 7th paragraph refers to______.
选项 A、power
B、the action of a lever
C、prize
D、prospective goodness
答案 A
解析
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